Best Practices

Journalists have created a set of principles that allows them to stop censoring their journalistic choices, especially in emerging digital environments. This Set of Principles reduces risk of copyright infringement by clarifying professional community standards. It identifies seven situations in which journalists routinely employ fair use, and what its limitations are: Incidental capture; proof; use in cultural journalism; illustration; historical reference; to foster public discussion and advancing the story.

The Visual Resources Association has released its own code of best practices in fair use. It will be enormously valuable to art teachers, librarians, curators, publishers and more. The Statement well describes the need for professionals working with image resources to know their free speech rights in regard to fair use.

This code of best practices in fair use in teaching for film/media educators was designed by The Society for Cinema and Media Studies. It deals with classroom screenings, broadcasts, and derivative works.

This document is a code of best practices that helps U.S. communication scholars to interpret the copyright doctrine of fair use. Fair use is the right to use copyrighted material without permission or payment under some circumstances—especially when the cultural or social benefits of the use are predominant. It is a general right that applies even in situations where the law provides no specific authorization for the use in question. This guide identifies four situations that represent the current consensus within the community of communication scholars about acceptable practices for the fair use of copyrighted materials.